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plurimus

Education is a gift from previous generations to the next. Two of the most important lessons are the ability to learn on ones own and the realization that learning is neither restricted in time nor place.

The Greeks main accomplishment was a multi-generational assemblage and resulting synergies of other ancient peoples’ achievements and a cogent way to communicate the same. Babylonians, Hittites, Egyptians, Syrians, Persians, Turks and others learnings are assembled into the Athenian democracy, theater, philosophy and logic. In turn, our systems have leveraged the Greek achievements. Without learning the why of these ideas, we risk the very foundations of our freedom, democracy and the laws that codify them.

There are crucial questions that should be pondered by everyone and most of that debate is contained in formulations and applications by the Greeks.

Distinctions between moral decency and contingent legislation, the relationship of religion to the state, the ideal of the pursuit of happiness, the difference between the truth and opinion, the danger of fomenting revolution under the slogan of liberty, the tyranny of the majority and at the same time the dangers of a pure democracy, the schism between rich and poor………I could go on.

The debate about, and best answers to questions as the ones above is in turn critical thought. The ability to make informed comparisons of constitutions, utopian thinking, innovation, critical, lateral and relativist thinking, are all skills needed for the ability to argue cogently.

Thomas Jefferson argued in “Notes on the State of Virginia” that the main goal of education in a democracy is to enable us to defend our liberty. History, he proposed, is the subject that equips citizens for this and Greek and other classics are foundational to that history.

History does not support LRT as a 3.3 Billion dollar solution to public transportation on the route or the regressive financial and insufficient density conditions that exist now or in the projected future. I am still waiting for a cogent argument in support of DOLRT (see previous thread) and clear rational reason why the decision was made to proceed.